Weekend Winners Club

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Saturday, January 09, 2021.  The NFL playoff challenge starts today.  If you’re unfamiliar with the contest, it’s a free entry on NFL and currently unknown what the grand prize is, but it’s usually quite nice. 

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In this contest you pick 8 players and you get a multiplier for their points for each game that they play, so in their 2^nd game you get 2x points, 3^rd game 3x points, etc.  So naturally you want to pick players from the teams that will go the farthest.  But you also get to select new players each round.

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The new playoff system is confusing for many, so take a look at it here, this is the best graphical representation.

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Obviously picking players from the top two teams is a good idea, in this contest, but not until round 2.  What you want to do is get the players from round 1 that you think will go the farthest, especially the star players.  Then you get 4x their points they get if they reach the superbowl.

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This is our current best model for the playoff results in this picture.  For the team picks it looks like all favs ATS except Steelers who can’t cover a spread this year.

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You can see that we like the Bills and Saints to play the most amount of games from round 1, and either could reach the Superbowl to be practical about it.  So my strategy was to stack up on Bills and Saints players and hope for the best. 

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Of course, filling the roster with all Saints and Bills is impractical.  The Bills running back committee scores 14 points per game total so you would only get decent points out of one of them in their 3^rd or 4^th game if they make it that far.  Use stud players in week 1 instead, and replace them with Packers and Chieves in the second round.

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Here’s my list of best players for this contest.

Alvin Kamara MVP

Josh Allen

Drew Brees

Aaron Rodgers

Patrick Mahomes

Aaron Jones

Devonte Adams

Travis Kelce

Stephon Diggs

Tyreek Hill

Edwards Helaire

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There are a host of good first round players that will probably win but not play more than one game.  I’m not distinguishing between them and first round players that I think will lose, because I’ll be sacrificing the bonus points to replace them with Packers and Chieves in the second round.

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We developed division rankings based on strength of schedule for this analysis, as well offensive and defensive stats.  The final division rankings:

1. AFC East 134
2. AFC West 132
3. NFC South 131
4. NFC West 127
5. AFC North 126
6. AFC South 125
7. NFC North 125
8. NFC East 120

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